One love, one… Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One love)
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One song)
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin', "One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right."
I'm pleading to mankind (One love)
Oh, Lord (One heart) Whoa.

Sorry guys, for some reason that song popped into my head and hasn’t left as yet and you know how I am about sharing and all.

The rain fell this morning, the sea looks calm, air smells fresh.

New addition to the mailing list, welcome Mr. Cohen, I know you are very opinionated and hope to be getting some response from you and any suggestions on how to make this blog/weekly email a better read. To read some of the older ones, www.mondaymail.blogspot.com, if at any time u get bored and want to be removed, holler.

Up until Wednesday morning I didn’t really have much to write about, been very focused on the world of Yaw recently, introspection is a beautiful thing, but more of that at another time. Anyway so I go to a clients for a meeting and in the waiting room they have a tv on this tv its Tyra Banks show and there is this black woman (I would otherwise not have added the black, but its necessary to illustrate my point) who is talking about how she went out of her way to marry a Korean guy so that her kids would not have to go thru the trauma that she had to go through with her nappy hair. I SAY NO!! BUT I ALSO SAY SHAME I AM SORRY FOR U SISTER! Soon after that I receive an sms saying and I quote ‘part of the reason tyra is beautiful is people don’t see her as black cos she’s light skinned and has light eyes…its wrong but it’s the way it is’ clearly she was watching the same show.

Once again I say NO!! I refuse to accept it as the way it is going to stay. I have just lost the game…but lets leave that just there. Oh wait where was I going with this. Oh so I had no story, then came Tuesday afternoon, then on Wednesday I wake up to hear that the Groot Krokodil (Big crocodile) PW Botha had passed on at the age of 90. Is there any justice in the world one might ask? This man, the face and voice of apartheid, for as long as I have been a live, the one under whose leadership the institution that ignited and perpetuated the racial divide that is now South Africa flourished lives till the age of 90 and then on the other hand we have an infant on his mothers back whose life is ended by a stray bullet….Thanks to the environment PW supported we now have a highly racially sensitive environment where we all tread on tiptoes so we don’t offend one other. We have a society where because of the teachings of the past we have coloured people who are generally or have some part of their past as black thinking they are better than black people (how’s this for a story I have a friend, a very successful guy, well respected, well mannered, just a regular nice guy, he has been dating this girl for the last 10 yrs or so, and she is a coloured gal needless to say he is black. Her folks are against the relationship a comment they made was no you cant do that daughter, its like you are going backwards, that’s just sad!), Indian people some of whom are as dark as some black people if not darker, but have straight hair thinking they are better than black people because that’s what the law said…they were second on the pecking order, then we have blacks who think the world owes them something because of the way they were marginalised in the past and everything bad that happens is because of apartheid. It’s a mess, but a mess that is righting itself. I have faith in the next generation, provided our generation doesn’t preach the divide based race to our kids! But that being said, if race isn’t the dividing factor there will be something else, because afterall we are human, and we need to identify with something.

I tend to get very carried away with this cos I just don’t get it, I grew up in the same world that everyone else did, was treated the same as most blacks, maybe slightly worse being a foreign born black, but the only ounce of detest/contempt I have is against fools… NEWAY

Enough philosophising back to the lecture at hand…Pieter Willem Botha, 1916-2006. He was born to Afrikaner parents on a farm in a town called Telegraaf in the then Orange Free State. He studied law at the now University of the Free State, but he left early to pursue a life in politics, so off to the Western Cape he missioned to take office in the National Parties offices. From an early age he knew what he was about cos he supported the Nazis before and during WWII and joined an organisation called the Ox Wagon Fire, he soon after changed his stance when the Nazi’s were about to lose and started taking a more Christian nationalism stance. He married Anna Elizabeth Rossouw (Elize) in 1943 with whom he had 2 sons and 3 daughters. She passed on in 1997. He remarried Barbara Robertson on 22 June 1998

He became a member of the National Party in 1948. In 1966 he became BJ Vorster’s (the prime minister of the republic at that time) defence minister. Vorster resigned in 1978 and PW was elected as his successor. And so it began…first were the cross border raids into Angola and Mozambique, then came the nuclear weapons programme with Israel which resulted in 6 such weapons being developed. His whole intention was to build South Africa’s military capabilities and as a result all white males of a certain age had to do at least 2 years of military service (I think).

In he became president, this move gave him more power and contrl. He changed the constitution and created 2 new houses of parliament, along with the whites only House of assembly one for coloured people (House of Representatives) and another for Indian people (House of delegates). The thinking was that the 3 parties had equal legislative rights, but the laws passed would only govern their communities. Yes I know where were the negroes, who were 90% of the population…ag sorreee! A lot of international people praised it as a step in the right direction. But it wasn’t all rosy for him many leaders of the west dubbed him as a brash racist dictator. Talks of sanctions were flying around, a lot of foreign companies pulled out of SA this was all a move to reduce the influence of the minority led government. This all started in the 1980’s and this lead to the weakening of the economy.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though, he did legalise interracial marriages, lifted the prohibition of multiracial political parties, relaxed the group areas act which prevented non-whites from living in certain areas, and he set the ball rolling in terms of initiating talks with Nelson Mandela and other political parties, but he couldn’t take it, there was going to be no way in hell that he was going to grant rights to blacks and end white supremacy…no chance! Brothers got angry, he declared states of emergency, operations to weed out the swart gevaar (‘black danger’) were being performed by secret operations such as vlakplaas. Under no circumstance was he willing to negotiate with the ANC. In 1985 he gave his in/famous crossing the rubicon speech, which was totally against what people expected him to speak about. He was meant to be talking about reforms etc. but instead he went on about how he wouldn’t give into the black majority and not release Nelson Mandela, what happened after that speech? The rand went for a ball of sh it, the country was pushed further aside, calls for sanctions grew louder.

Say what you will but in my mind he was a plonker (had a different word starting with a p and ending in an s but this is a family show), there are talks that he was misunderstood, the newspapers are going on about how he set the ball in motion for the breakdown of apartheid…whateverrrrr. During his reign, plenty were detained without trial, the less fortunate were tortured and killed, no explanations given, no one held accountable. He was asked to come to Truth and Reconciliation hearings he refused and he even went as far as refusing to apologise for his part in apartheid and apparently at his 90th birthday during an interview, he made comments that suggested that he had no regrets about the way he ran the country.

But as with most things of ‘evil’, flourish they shall not (in Yoda speak). His personality regarding the way he made rules regarding the country and the party led to a split in the party. In 1989, he had a stroke and as a result he was forced to step down FW de Klerk took over and I guess the rest is all history as they say…first democratic elections of 27 April 1994

Birthdays
27th Chief
2nd Nov Isabel Goodman

On that note get out of here I must. I really am trying to make this shorter but me loves to waffle I guess, the weekend is almost near, u all keep well enjoy the rest of ur day.

Maximun respect…as it was in the beginning so shall it be in the end…

Y